


In Sickness

by still_lycoris



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Protective Siblings, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 22:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16543760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: River knows that Simon isn't very well.





	In Sickness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedibuttercup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).



Simon was sick.

He was pretending not to be sick but River could tell. His skin was too shiny. His pupils weren’t the right shape any more. He was shivering a little, even though the ambient temperature was perfectly correct. No, Simon was sick.

She did not want Simon to be sick.

It had been hard to remember quite who he was at first. She remembered that he was important straight away, right at the start when she returned from the cold and he was there, in front of her, trying to make right what could never be made right. She first looked into his anxious face and she knew that he was someone safe. Someone special. Someone that mattered.

But why and how that was ... that was all muddled up. Churned up like butter with all the wrong parts on top. “Brother” was the word and “Simon” was the name but they didn’t seem to fit together in a way that she could make work, even though she wanted to. She wanted to badly.

But “important” ... she could cling to that. Had done as much as she could, even when everything else around her was wriggling, trying to throw her off. Simon was there and Simon would not be thrown off, even when she’d hit him and called him weird names. Simon was ... Simon.

And now Simon was sick and not telling anybody about it.

When he left to go to his cabin, she followed him. She followed him a little too quietly. When he turned round to close his door, he jumped and swore, then looked even sicker. The Captain had told her not to creep around like a mouse but silence was good. Silence got you to places. Silence was golden, silence was next to godliness, no, that was cleanliness, wasn’t it, have to ask Book that sometime ...

“Are you all right?” Simon asked, bringing her back. Her mind still wandered down pathways that it oughtn’t.

“You’re not all right,” she said.

“It’s nothing,” Simon muttered. “Just a bit ... it’s nothing, River.”

“Liar,” she said, reaching out and touching his hand. “Shouldn’t lie. Not to me. I’m your sister.”

The word hung between them for a moment. Then Simon smiled, a shaky sort of smile, nodded his head and sat on the bed with a thump. River sat next to him, took his hand. It was sweaty but that was all right. She stroked it.

“Now you have to lie down,” she said sternly. “And I’ll get you medicine and something to drink and you get better.”

“All right,” Simon said. He sounded slightly drowsy already, even though he wasn’t lying down. “I trust you.”

River’s heart swelled with in her then. For a moment, everything was clear and sharp and real, the way it should be. Despite everything that had happened, Simon, her brother, trusted her to take care of him.

And that was everything.


End file.
